


Shadow of Happiness

by link621



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-28
Updated: 2005-11-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 02:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/link621/pseuds/link621
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuuta’s hot-headed nature completely blew what he would later learn to be his last chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadow of Happiness

Fuji Shuusuke – tennis prodigy. Born February 29 – age, six. Haha. Blood type – B. Blood type I think he should be – AB. Blood type most people think he is – extraterrestrial. It’s understandable, really. Sometimes I think Aniki is an alien, too. A very short alien – like one of those little green men of old sci-fi movie fame. Height – 169 centimeters. He grew a grand total of two centimeters since junior high. Eyes – blue. Hair – light brown. Profession – photographer. He gave up tennis long before it advanced to anything on the professional level. I remember the day well – it was also the exact moment I realized that if I did not do something just then, I would never have the chance again… the moment I realized he really was not joking.

We used to bathe together when we were young – it was one of my favorite times of day, then. I idolized my big brother… unlike many young boys that would cling to their mother or try to walk in the image of their father, I became fixated on the almost frail, quirky thing that was my sibling. Though any frailty I had imagined while painting this oddly heroic image of my brother was nothing but that – fabricated. In reality… Fuji Shuusuke is a powerful being – he was even then. 

…But bathing then was nothing like this one moment in time – I had quite accidentally encountered him, starkly naked, just out of the shower on a weekend when I was home… it was my second year of senior high, I remember. He was getting ready to go to a pre-graduation party and had been hogging the bathroom for what seemed like an eternity; after all, I had a date that night, and Aniki was selfishly… I think the first thing I noticed was just how masculine he looked without clothing (and his fashion sense in particular) to cast the illusion that his body was more effeminate. Second came the arch of his hipbones – the intoxicating angle of his body that hid anything too risqué from my line of sight, but still exposed his skin from heel to the nape of his neck where typically light hair was dark and plastered to his skin with the remnants of the water from the shower.

Finally, my eyes landed on his – blue eyes narrowed dangerously, daring me forward. For weeks – years, even – after, I would daydream about all the things I could have done in that moment… or sometimes wake up from a dream of that particular moment with a few under-creative curses (only so under-creative as they became necessary on an alarmingly frequent basis) and the strongest desire to shower, if only it would not remind me further of the daydreams. In one such daydream, I would have pushed him roughly against the glass of the shower, making a Shuusuke-shaped print in the steamed glass. In that particular fantasy, I had all the control until he did that damnable thing – he would murmur my name against my ear, the tip of his tongue running over the arch of the cartilage at the top of the ear. Trembling in both body and voice, I would only manage, “Aniki…”

“It’s Shuusuke,” he would correct me. “Yuuta,” in that terrible way he would say the name, and then, “I want you to…” 

The blank was filled differently each time.

What really happened… was another story entirely. I told him I had a date – that he was taking forever. Striken, he did something I rarely got to see from Aniki – he looked honestly surprised and maybe just a little concerned before wrapping a towel around himself and vacating the bathroom. When the door closed behind him, that was when the daydreams began – when the beat of my heart in my throat was simply alarming… and this alarm only made my blood pump faster – my heart pound harder. The water had been like ice when I stepped in… I wondered vaguely if I had taken up the offer unspoken but clearly communicated in Aniki’s eyes, if the water would have been warm.

After that, I did not really see much of him again – he graduated from that school along with one of the most well missed senior classes to ever leave the tennis club in Seishun Gakuen history. Their captain and vice captain left the team in good hands, of course, and really… Aniki had not been interested in tennis in a long time. I remember the one and only time I went to the apartment where he lived throughout college, the racquet he had once used to reign over the tennis world was lying in the corner collecting dust – I had walked in to find my older brother tending to his cacti, looking outside distantly with that same comfortable smile he always wore. I no longer had to hear him say my name that way anymore – he no longer got a sudden light in his eyes at the sight of me, anymore.

I was, after that day, his younger brother, no longer Yuuta. The name I had worked so hard to earn – the name that I had to somehow build out of his shadow was ripped from me in an instant by the shadow itself.

A year later, I also ended up in college – my grades were good enough in high school that college was a cake walk. I graduated and immediately was hired by a big cooperation in the advertising department. It was an eight-to-five job… I had a cubical and a uniform look… actually, it was a bit like high school all over again. Looking twenty years into my future, all I could see was a burned-out, lonely man with no wife or children, still leeching off the memories of a better time when I was still young and desperately naïve to the honesty behind the words Aniki spoke that I always had assumed were in jest.

Aniki – older brother. Age – six. Really. He looks good with his hair back in a headband, though, just enough to keep it out of his eyes while he reads one last time over his vows to make sure he has them memorized perfectly. He practiced on the mannequin that up until very recently had been dressed in his tuxedo, asking the hideous thing to be with him until death. My eyes watched him move; the same flourish and grace followed him as it always has, even though that was the first time I had really watched him in years. I thought to myself that the woman he was going to marry when he stepped out that door had nice hands… they would look lovely laid in those thin hands that were, in that moment, asking the mannequin to dance with an exaggerated gesture.

With a knock on the door, Kawamura popped his head in, telling Aniki that it was time. I continued to admire my brother patiently – watch as the headband came out, his hair shaking free and falling back into its usual style that had not changed… well, as long as I had been alive, it seemed. As long as I could continue to leech off of this memory… off of those familiar eyes and unchanging hair… 

“How do I look?” The sudden inquiry surprised me – I blinked slowly at my brother, unable to respond right away. A nervous thread seemed to lace in his voice… so very unlike tennis prodigy Fuji Shuusuke or even Aniki Fuji Shuusuke. “I’m anxious,” admitted my brother, by all means completely disturbing the natural order of the universe.

But – that was just what Aniki did.

“Honestly,” I growled back – because that’s what I did. “Grow a pair, already, would you, Aniki?”

This was the way it was meant to work out – I think that when I see pictures by my brother that make it into prestigious publications or hear his name in passing mention in regard to tennis (usually when a certain former classmate of mine decides to stalk me to the office and coerce me into sitting down for coffee with him – one day I will learn how to say no to that… that… poof). 

It’s not happiness, no – happiness is reserved for Fuji Shuusuke. But I’m okay being in the shadow of happiness.

Fuji Yuuta – left-hand killer. Birthday – February 18, age twenty-three. Height – 172 centimeters, a mere two centimeters taller than I was when I left junior high. Bloodtype – O. Eyes and hair – brown. Profession – advertising agent. You’ve probably never heard of me.


End file.
